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JAPAN
GROUP TRIP 2009
DEBBIE DANBROOK Dear Friends, Welcome to another year end newsletter. I hope this letter finds you all well and happy. Whew, time has really flown since I last wrote. Here are some of the events I participated in this past year.
2008 began for me with a
profoundly moving experience when I was asked to play my flute at the
Sri Chinmoy Memorial Service here in Toronto. For those of you not
familiar with Sri Chinmoy he was an amazing spiritual leader and also a
wonderful writer, painter and musician. I played a song that he had
written for one of his visits to Japan and as the music flowed through
me I was filled with the deepest feeling of peace I have ever felt. I
even look like a bit like him in the picture taken while I played. I
would like to offer my thanks to Sri Chinmoy for the wonderful radiant
peace he left behind for us all.
There will come a time when
this world of ours Soon after this beautiful Memorial I had a gig playing for a modern day Tea Ceremony. The artist, Amy Barbour, had built an entire installation made out of tea soaked fabric. The lucky participants basked in a cocoon of complete sensory delight. I had the wonderful job of playing Shakuhachi for them all. In April I offered a Healing Music Benefit Concert in Ottawa with Steve on piano and Ian Hepburn on harp. This year the benefit was for Ottawa Friends of Tibet to help them raise funds for the retirement home they are building in India for Tibetans living in exile. The land there was donated by the office of the Dalai Lama. It was a fantastic evening and we had a sell out crowd of 350. $7,000 was raised between the ticket sales and the market of Tibetan arts and crafts. I wish them well with the building. I played at several Edgar Cayce events this year. The highlight for me was playing at the May conference in Kingston - their 25th anniversary event. I wove my music throughout the weekend and rarely have I felt such a clarity of light in the energy field of a large group of listeners. There were so many big angels there, what a joy and a privilege it was to play in their midst. In May I also went to Utah to play at a workshop in the mountains there, so beautiful. I combined that trip with a visit to my friend Tim Landers in Las Angeles to do some work/play on a new recording. More news on this next year. In June and October I was invited to Sunnybrook Hospital to play at the Memorial Services offered for the patients who have died and their families, friends, and the staff who have had the privilege to attend them. There is a very committed group of Chaplains working there at Sunnybrook and they do an amazing job of offering spiritual guidance for the 10,000 people (patients and staff) under their care. I offered several Journey to the Heartı workshops with my friends Lorraine Gane, Wendy Morrell and Jill Davey. One in Toronto and another in Guelph. Lorraine and I also had an Earth Prayers Solstice gathering in Toronto, dancing led by Moira MacDonald and guitarist Mark Battenburg joining the celebration. In June I spent a week playing at the Sacred Dance Festival in Connecticut. It was the 50th anniversary and some of the original founders of the Sacred Dance Guild were there. It was one of most wonderful festivals I have ever attended. Dancers of all kinds from all over the world. I think I played the most I have ever played in one week! On our last day we had a trip to Jacobıs Pillow, one of the first dance centres for modern dance. I saw three performances, all fabulous, and best of all I was so happy to spend the day with Carla DeSola. Carla is one of the founders of Sacred Dance and is an Angel of Dance. Thank you Carla for being here. Thanks also to Wendy Morrell, organizer extrordinaire for her excellent dance festival planning. Well done! In November a British choreographer living now in North Carolina, Claire Elizabeth Barratt, came to Toronto to perform with me and friend Celina Carroll at the Gladstone Hotel. I met Claire at the Sacred Dance Festival, what a wonderful dancer. Claire and I then drove to Ottawa to offer a Sacred Dance workshop there - Phoenix Rising. The trip fell on the Remembrance Dance weekend and I was blessed by being able to attend the Memorial Service at the Cenotaph in downtown Ottawa. Very moving. Afterwards I went with Wendy and friends and drank beer and danced at the Legion. My life is always full of strange contrasts! Back to Toronto to play an Autumn Trilogy concert with Steve and Mark. A lovely wee concert enjoyed by all. The year had some really unique, fun events. I played at Kathy and Patrickıs super fun wedding at one of the gorgeous estates at Sunnybrook. I had my Tarot read by Kathy out in the courtyard here under a mystical tree. Wow, it was an amazing story the Tarot had to tell. Ruth and I danced on a magical labyrinth woven through the woods somewhere in Almonte. There were lots and lots of fairies dancing with us. As always the Labyrinth inspires and guides me, plus offers wildly fun opportunites for dance and frolic. Our Guelph workshop was held at the Jesuit Ignatius Centre and the outdoor Labyrinth offered us a sacred space where we were blessed by Sun, music, dance and festive scarves! At Toronto Island I danced on the beautiful red cedar chip Labyrinth that rings a wise old tree and had a huge revelation occur that day. One of my oddest Labyrinth workshops was held at the University of Toronto in a noisy common area - still the magic managed to flow through to the walkers and observers both. I continue to play my Shakuhachi Meditations at a great variety of spiritual centres - some of my favourite being yoga centres. I also continue offering Shakuhachi lessons and Healing Sessions in Toronto, Ottawa and Guelph. I have such wonderful students, a joy to be with. We had our Third Shakuhachi Play Day - here in Toronto this year. I am planning a trip to Japan in the spring with some of these students and any new and old friends that wish to join us. Shakuhachi meditations under the cherry blossoms at my favourite temples. I have met some wonderful new friends following the Sufi spiritual path and I will be finishing off the year joining them to play at a Festival of Lights gathering this month.
Sending you all LOTS of LOVE
and LIGHT for the coming year,
Listen to the sound
Fall 2008 Click image for larger view...
HEALING
MUSIC
Debbie Danbrook is a
master of the Japanese Shakuhachi flute, an ancient instrument
originally played as a type of Zen. Her music has been embraced around
the globe for its healing properties. Steve Raiman is well known in
Japan for his expressive piano recordings and The 'Sacred Sounds' trilogy consists of 'Sacred Sounds for the Spa', 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' and 'Sacred Sounds for Sleep'. The Spa CD offers music for relaxation, the Sleep CD music to help listeners get a good night's sleep and the 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' CD is music for inner reflection. Debbie offers the listener of the Soul CD a vibrational chord that will help in the journey of the Soul. 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' - building the channel between the earth and the angels. Dedicated with great love and affection to Debbie's Dad, Milton Danbrook. The CD is now available online or telephone 1-888-MUSIC-38 to order.
Sounds For Insomniacs Debbie Danbrook and Steve
Raiman hope that listening to their latest CD No, really. It's not that they record hour-long political speeches and engineers reading textbooks out loud in monotones. Danbrook and Raiman have spent years exploring the field of making relaxation music. They've made 15 CDs together and sold more than 25,000 - not much of a number if you're a rock star looking for a hit but gratifying if you're a pair of Canadian musicians producing spiritual healing music. The ultimate in relaxation, they figure, is sleep. Like many people, Danbrook has had problems for years with insomnia. Their recently released CD, Sacred Sounds For Sleep, has put her to sleep, and kept her asleep for hours when she sets her player to repeat. "We're doing the music for ourselves," says Raiman. "It's part of our own healing process." Danbrook, 45, plays an ancient Japanese flute called the shakuhachi, traditionally reserved for the exclusive use of Japanese monks. She spent three years in Japan learning to play it in the traditional way, then came back to Canada and found her own way to play shakuhachi for healing and relaxation. Raiman, 37, plays piano and is well known in Japan for music he has composed and performed. He has toured that country with his music 15 times in the last few years. Both had their basic musical training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Their music is heavily influenced by Eastern tradition, and also by nature. Danbrook enjoys playing her shakuhachi outdoors, and Raiman looks to nature for inspiration for his piano music and names his works accordingly. Their North American CDs are marketed in Danbrook's name and produced by Raiman. They all feature shakuhachi music, sometimes blended with piano, sometimes guitar or cello, and other times with combinations of instruments and voices. American lecturer and music expert Don Campbell, author of the 1997 bestseller The Mozart Effect, says he is familiar with their music, and appreciates it himself. After living seven years in Japan, he says he admires traditional shakuhachi music, but also enjoys the different effects that Danbrook creates with the ancient instrument. "She makes an interesting bridge between traditional Japanese music and modern Western psychology," he says. "Her integrity is magnificent and her work has a real place in the well-being of our society. She's a bit of a muse." Nobody taps a toe to Danbrook's and Raiman's music. "It's not music you hum," acknowledges Danbrook. "It goes right through you. You feel it in your bones. This is experiential music. You don't listen to it with your ears - you listen with your heart. People respond to it from a different place." They do respond - in numbers, as Judy Brake discovered to her surprise. Brake, senior producer of arts at Studio Two for TV Ontario, found herself almost overwhelmed with audience response after Danbrook played the shakuhachi on the program on two occasions. "We've had Ben Heppner on the show, Jann Arden, Shirley Eikhart, some jazz greats, you name it, but the first time Debbie was on I was inundated with more calls and e-mails than for any of the others," Brake says. "I was getting e-mails for two or three weeks after the program, from people in North Bay, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, all over the province, wanting to know how to buy the CDs. "People said they loved how soothing the music is, what a calming effect it has, a comforting feeling, like an oasis of calm." Danbrook and Raman say they aim their music at helping people transcend the stresses of day-to-day life, including the difficulties of dealing with technology and constant noise. "There always seem to be the sounds of machines, the hum of fluorescence, fans, computers, hard drive sounds, " says Raiman. "It's almost numbing after a while. The shakuhachi is the opposite to that. It helps to centre the mind." Danbrook says playing the music grounds her, and she wants her music to have the same effect on listeners. "All of that noise around us deadens us somehow," she suggests. "Healing music takes us back to our centre, to our core." She was inspired to make the sleep CD after people told her about her earlier musical works, that they really liked the beginning of the CD. "I wondered what was wrong with the end," she says. It turned out that people were dozing off to her music because it was so soothing, and they often didn't hear the end. Then Danbrook and Raiman met American physician Pamela Peeke at a conference. Peeke, an occasional Oprah guest and an assistant professor at the University of Maryland medical school, also speaks on stress-related health issues. They talked together about how many people suffer from insomnia, and Peeke urged the pair to create a sleep-promoting CD. "We live in a sleep-deprived society," suggests Danbrook. "We've cut back on our sleep and we are forcing ourselves to get by on an hour or two less each night than our ancestors got." The healing qualities of sleep occurred to Danbrook after a car accident on the way to visit her family. She suffered whiplash but, in shock, made her way to her destination, stopping briefly for a bag of ice at a corner store. "I sat with the ice on my neck and put my CD on to play, and all three of us fell asleep in our chairs," she recalls. "When I woke up, my neck had released and I was ready to go and get the medical help I needed." She recorded the special sleep CD with a different shakuhachi than the usual one she plays, a longer one that makes deeper sounds. She found it four years ago at an international shakuhachi festival in Colorado. Of the 300 players performing, she was the only woman. Only one shakuhachi maker was there, and it turned out to be the man who had made her instrument. He had this special long flute with him and Danbrook gladly spent $3,000 to buy it, relieved that her credit card limit had just been raised by that amount. Raiman says he and Danbrook often record on special occasions and birthdays. They recorded the sleep CD last Boxing Day, Danbrook's birthday. Peeke, who had helped to inspire the creation of the CD, says she is pleased any time Danbrook records a new one. "I call it healing music," she says. "Debbie's music is constantly playing in the medical environments where I work. My patients find her flute soothing and calming as they work through their own trials and tribulations. It's such a welcome sound. It really touches your soul." Toronto chiropractor and acupuncturist Hideki Kumagai says he believes that some of the health benefits from Danbrook's music result from the relaxation state produced when brainwaves match the rhythms of the sounds she makes with her shakuhachi. "In this day and age of high anxiety, that is healthful," he says. "I've observed at performances that the music puts people into a relaxed state akin to meditation. "Studies have shown the health benefits of a meditative state: it regularizes the heart and respiratory rates, the kidney, the liver and the blood flow. This is pretty obvious, watching people at a performance, and I expect that the same thing happens to people at home listening to a CD." Health is not his own prime motive for listening to Danbrook's and Raiman's music, though, Kumagai admits. "It's fun to listen to, and that's a simple fact," he says. Raiman and Danbrook have worked together for 14 years. They want their music to be a kind of mini retreat for listeners, the two say. "How do you integrate the relaxation you need into your day-to-day life?" demands Danbrook. Everyone's always so busy. If you can't relax at a spa, at least you can stop for a few minutes in your own home, light a candle, have a cup of tea and listen to some healing music." For more information, see Danbrook's and Raiman's Web site at www.healingmusic.com
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Healing
Music is pleased to announce the release of 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul',
the final CD in the 'Sacred Sounds' trilogy. This is Debbie Danbrook's
sixteenth CD and her most personal and intimate recording. This music
features her angelic vocals with Shakuhachi flute, a new flute with a
clear and light tone. The 'stardust' keyboards played by Steve Raiman
and shimmering guitar tracks by Brian Hughes give this latest CD an
exquisitely beautiful soundscape.